Our Own Worst Enemy

Ahh, bless cross-country plane rides. I love catching up on recent releases I might not otherwise see.

One such movie? The Last Mimzy. It's a bit of a slow burn, but I have to give the film credit for its refusal to pander. This is pretty sophisticated for family fare, and I found the ending really satisfying.

What interested me most, though, was the reminder that not all films need to have a villian. In this case, the "alien" life form of Mimzy is benign... though misunderstood. As the news of Mimzy's powers spreads, so does the fear, eventually leading to Mimzy and the whole family being quarantined by -- you guessed it -- the FBI. Does this sound familiar at all?

There's a certain kind of family story in which the antagonism comes from us -- human beings, going about our jobs. You might even go so far as to say the human beings in these stories -- the FBI, CIA, whatever -- represent the adults of the world, who are simply not able to see the truth -- fantastical thought it might be -- through our fear of the unknown.

Personally, I kind of like that these stories call me out on my grown-up fears. And I really like the absence of a "bad guy". How refreshing!

Bitch Bitch Bitch

I got out a lot, into the sun, this long weekend. Honest, I did. But I also spent a little over two hours in the darkness of the theatre, with an old friend named John McClane.

Live Free or Die Hard was a lot of fun. I'm not going to break it down for you... I think you're pretty much going, or not. But something did occur to me during this movie that I think is worth mentioning. Very early on, there's a moment in which a henchman tells another henchman -- both of whom have just screwed up -- "You tell her." And for about .0015 of a second I thought: ooh, is the big baddie in this Die Hard a woman?

It's not. I'm not even spoiling anything -- the villain is not kept secret long. And while a "he" is in charge, his number two is definitely a force to be reckoned with. And it occurred to me: why the heck couldn't the supervillain in this movie have been a woman? And why is this so darn rare?

Here, I think, is the problem, broken down into its problem-parts:

1) A big, bad villain has to be really powerful and bad-ass. That can be a woman, but there's this general feeling that a super-strong woman is an exception to the rule. (Though TV seems to make this exception all the time for gals like Buffy, Veronica, Xena, Sydney Bristow, Jamie Sommers, Painkiller Jane, Jessica "Dark Angel" Alba, etc.)

2) On a related note, many find depictions of evil women lacking in credibility. Women are believed to be more nurturing, more community-minded... less selfish, less on-the-take. My argument to that? Do you find the male villains in action movies credible as human beings?

3) I have to wonder if there's a sense that we won't enjoy seeing a female villain getting the snot kicked out of her when her time comes. I have to say--the new Die Hard doesn't pull a single punch (or McClane-quip) from the female baddie, and I, for one, found that refreshing. I wasn't uncomfortable, because she was his physical match. They were equals; she was no victim.

4) It's possible that many filmmakers are reluctant to write a female villain because the very act of casting a woman as evil can feel political: mean women tend to be either androgynous monsters (Tilda Swinton as Narnia's White Witch), traiterous whores (Lena Olin's Mona in Romeo is Bleeding) or hideous, loveless, jealous, bitter crones (pretty much any Disney villain from the '30s through 1989). To that, I say the obvious: well then, do something else with your mean ladies!

Now, I don't expect to reconcile everything about men and women and the male gaze, and give birth to a new form of feminism that makes everyone feel equal to the point where characters are accessing the whole spectrum of human possibility... but wouldn't it be cool if I did? Take that, all you people who think blogging's a waste of time! Ha! (Hey, would you guys mind backing me up here? Could you go ahead and write some awesome female villains, that are interesting and credible and ass-kicky, so my blog legacy will live on? Thanks, I owe ya!)

*Props to Joss Whedon for Glory and Jasmine, among others, as well as Glenn Close for her Marquise. Feel free to add your props-deservers below.

Make an Enemy a Friend

Sometimes a story needs a temporary antagonist until the real antagonist has had time to get close to the hero.

Take Zoolander. Mugatu is somewhat removed from Zoolander for the first while. So to fill the space with tension until Mugatu can come into play, Zoolander's most-hated is his model-rival Hansel. Without this antagonism in the first act, there wouldn't have been much going on. As is, we get the excitement of the walk-off while Mugatu plots. And the beauty of a Hansel is, you can turn him into an ally on a dime.

Besides, Zoolander without Hansel is like a funeral without a good eugoogaly.

When a Dozen Terrorists Just Isn't Enough

It had been a while since I'd seen Die Hard. I knew it was going to hold up-- I just wasn't sure what new thing I might learn from it. What I discovered was just how many assholes one movie can stand.

Here's what's everyone remembers about the movie: a New York cop (McClane) must outwit, outlast, and outshoot a dozen terrorists in a tower office building to save his wife Holly and the rest of her co-workers. McClane gets a little help from an L.A. cop, Al, on the ground.

So, a hero and a couple of allies vs. a dozen or more villains. Surely that's plenty to deal with.

Except the movie keeps adding to the "bad" side, making things wildly unbalanced. McClane's seriously outnumbered by terrorists. Then the local cops who come to his aid (Al aside) are incompetent. Then the FBI comes on the scene-- ignorant pinheads who do exactly the wrong thing and endanger their own lives, and the lives of the hostages. Then there's the journalists-- particularly the William Atherton character, who visits McClane's family and scares his kids. And who could forget the idiotic coke-snorting hostage Ellis, who manages to reveal to Hans Gruber that one of the hostages is the wife of the "cowboy" who's killing his men?

So, good guys: 3 or 4. Bad guys: maybe 50?

McClane, as good as he is, is a true underdog. And he has lots of moments of frustration, suffering, and failure. But it sure makes those moments of triumph (and Al's, and Holly's) that much sweeter.

You can always stack things a little higher against the hero.